Mysteries of Britain

By Michelle Brachet

The Little Book of Mysteries of Britain begins by uncovering an array of historical mysteries, exposing the tales of the past that are sitting right underneath us in the present. From the secrets of 17th and 18th-century smuggler s tunnels to the flight of Mary, Queen of Scots, particular mysteries are researched, studied and explained in detail. Proving also to be a good do-it-yourself guide, if there is a local mystery that you have always wanted to get to the bottom of, you will learn how to get your very own investigations underway.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G2 Rights
• Release date: Aug 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781782815150

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Secrets of the

Smugglers’ Tunnels

In the 17th and 18th centuries Britain was awash with smuggling. It was rife in Kent, Northumberland, Wales and Scotland. In the southwest they say this was bigger business than farming.

Cornish smugglers were an inventive bunch and called themselves ‘free traders’ and were very proud of their ability to outsmart the revenue men who were employed to catch them. They hid their contraband in barrels with false bottoms and disguised tobacco as twists of rope. The smuggled goods were hidden in bedrooms, chapels, mansions, and cellars for hundreds of years.

In a Cornish fishing town, 12 miles east of Penzance, local legend has it that it was a hotbed for smuggling tea, brandy, and tobacco in the 17th and 18th centuries. Having advertised his Cornish pub, The Ship Inn in Porthleven, as a ‘smuggling inn’ for many years, the landlord is convinced that there has to be some element of truth in it just because of the sheer number of stories about the subject.

Was the pub directly linked to smuggling or not? Although there is no hard evidence, for 20 years the locals have been telling stories of smuggling, hidden passage ways, tunnels to the cliffs, and allegedly down in his cellar there is a covered up entrance to a tunnel.

The Ship Inn, Porthleven

In the 18th century, taxes and smuggling were at an all time high. A cup of tea would cost you six times in Britain as it would in France, and a glass of brandy five times more. No surprise then that people would take huge risks in bringing their duty free contraband ashore. But how did they actually do it? Are there actually tunnels in the landlord’s cellar, or is that just a good Cornish yarn?

The first obvious difficulty to address is what evidence will have survived, when it was a practice that people were trying to hide so very well in the first place.

National Archives

In the cellar, the first thing that needs to be established is what two blocked up shoots were used for. By making a plan of the cellar and a plan of the first floor, it can been seen how they line up. It draws a blank – the two shafts that the landlord highlighted in fact rise in the wrong place. The main one architecturally couldn’t have been used as a back door for contraband booze because it comes up in the middle of the building. Conclusion: the shafts have nothing to do with it!

A nearby smuggling hotspot: South West Coast Path Looking south west towards Kingsand and Cawsand, the latter to the left. Before 1844 Kingsand was in Devon and Cawsand in Cornwall. They are both now Cornish villages. In 1804 it was estimated that as many as fifty smuggling vessels operated from Cawsand Bay

Working out how the Ship Inn could have looked during the 18th century is also integral to the mystery. This can be done by focusing in on everything about the building and surroundings that date back to that time and earlier, meanwhile totally ignoring anything else that was built later. Windows often give a great clue to the smuggling era, especially wonky ones. Pre-Edwardian windows often didn’t line up properly.

The National Archives can also be of great help in trying to find evidence of an official story. Is there documentary proof that smuggling did in fact take place in Porthleven? Look for official accounts and breakdowns for hard evidence – criminal records are a good starting point. In this instance a court case is found documented against a group of smugglers. They were tried for killing a customs officer who was whipped to death on his way to intercept the smugglers. It is discovered that smuggling in Porthleven was in fact pretty big business. But so far nothing has linked it to the Ship Inn.

So many boats and such a large, open coastline was an invitation for smugglers to bring contraband in. In addition to that, the Cornish were very poor people, they therefore needed the smuggling to boost their income. Everybody did it from the poor to the rich. If a smuggler was caught and he’d gone to court, he often got away with it, because the judge was probably buying the goods from him as well! A somewhat corrupt society, but apparently, a lovely one!

The most likely place that was linked to smuggling was a cave just along the coast from the village and it is thought that it linked up with a large house called Methleigh Manor.

Records at The National Archives also reveals that the landlords of the Ship Inn had lived at Methleigh Manor, putting the pub right back in the middle of everything. The wealthy land owning family were trying to get one of their men put into the customs house, so that they had an insider on the job.

Although the concept of smugglers tunnels in the pub were not correct and at Methleigh Manor, it is thought that tunnels exist along the coastline near the manor house, and that on the coastal path on the cliff tops the entrance to the tunnel could be located.

Two square openings side by side in the rocks in a cove in fact mark the (what is assumed) manmade entrance to a cave; because of the shape there is not much chance that the sea has done that naturally as they are both the same height and dimensions. If the manor house is on top of the hill above the cove then this may have uncovered smuggling central.

Evidence at The National Archives also directly links the owners of the manor house and the Ship Inn with smuggling. The actual customs book that the officers wrote in when they were recording the smuggling incidents proves this. There is a letter from the owner himself, asking permission to move goods up and down the coast, which had allegedly washed up on the shore! The wealthy family had rights of salvage and the letter relates to his request to the ‘right of wreck’ that just so happens to start from the coastline from the Ship Inn. The evidence proves that they were definitely involved in smuggling, or at the very least had the opportunity to be so.

On further investigation of the coves, however, it is found that the cave openings are in fact natural and not manmade after all. Over thousands of years a